This year’s Saltburn. An ethereal mix of noir, exploitation, wife beating, body building, carpetbagging, blackmail, steroids, bug snacking, daddy issues, such a long string of coincidence it could run a marathon, topped off with a healthy dose of surrealism. I guess going with the flow brings reward. Not sure it made much of being set in 1989, no signs of movie theater marquees promoting Batman or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade though the principals might have got a buzz out of Lethal Weapon.
You do have to wonder though at choice. Was this all that Kirsten Stewart was offered or has she aligned herself as the kind of arthouse darling whose attachment makes such an unwieldy project feasible? But an actress who can switch from Seberg (2019) to Charlie’s Angels (2019) and back again to Crimes of the Future (2022) demonstrates the kind of versatility that can sit easily on both sides of the Hollywood fence. But it’s a step too far for martial artist Katy O’Brian (Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, 2023).
Coincidence can only get you so far though generally you can rely on a screenwriter to attempt to magnify relationships by ensuring that nobody gets through a movie without having some difficult relationship. That guy on the corner, let’s make him an uncle. The kid who appears once, let’s make him a drug addict who’s addicted to heroin because he blames himself for his mum dying in childbirth. Coincidence overload has found a true champion here.
So hitchhiker Jackie (Katy O’Brian) has sex in the car of JJ (Dave Franco) on the understanding that he’ll find her a job on a shooting range owned by Lou (Ed Harris) who happens to be the father and shares the same name as Lou (Kirsten Stewart) a gym manager who falls for Jackie’s swelling pecs and who happens also to be JJ’s brother-in-law. Lady Lou happens to have a sometime girlfriend Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov) who happens upon Jackie driving Lady Lou’s car after Jackie’s s murdered JJ. And Lady Lou’s only happened upon the murder because – you can see where this going.
Luckily Lady Lou is experienced in getting rid of a corpse – and luckily there are plenty of good-sized rugs to spare because she has to lug out a total of three dead bodies. Her dad’s a gun-runner and corrupter of cops so he’s immune to pretty much everything unless his daughter decides to rat him out, which might be a complication for her, given that earlier she was running in his slipstream.
There’s plenty lowlife mixed in with high end angst, Lady Lou falling out with Jackie once she cottons on to the fact that she quite enjoys bisexuality and has no objection to swapping sex for a job, not even with an odious wife-beating brother-in-law. And then Lou has to come to terms with the fact that after committing murder Jackie’s only concern is in high-tailing it down to Vegas for a body building competition.
So really way too much narrative and subplot for this thin gruel. But in passing there are some memorable moments. For a start, this is the first time I can remember seeing anyone at a shooting range who isn’t a cop of the Dirty Harry persuasion or a spy. To see ordinary folks happily popping off at targets and enjoying a beer afterwards goes a long way to explain the country’s obsession with ownership of weaponry.
And the face of the victim of the wife-beating was truly shocking as was what was left of JJ’s jaw once Jackie had smashed it into a table. Then we have the surreality – a full-grown Lady Lou pops out of JJ’s mouth covered in birth residue, Jackie’s muscles audibly crack almost every time she takes a breath and when she goes into full-blown Incredible Hulk mode her tee-shirt splits in half, plus she turns into a giant to pin down Daddy Lou.
By the time you get to the end, there’s been so many changes of tempo and mood that you’re grateful that after all this is really a romantic comedy complete with making up on a tennis court and a corpse coming to life in the back of a car. It’s a good few tunes short of a decent picnic, but once you realize this is more of a cartoon than a genuine noir thriller and go with the flow it has rewarding moments. There’s a decent amount of nihilism and almost anytime anyone makes a declaration of love you can be sure they’re going to blow the loved one’s brains out or do something to totally contradict their statement.
As directed by Rose Glass (Saint Maud, 2019), it might have been better if the surrealism had infused the entire movie rather than being reseved, as if the icing on the cake, for the final segments.
As I said, this year’s Saltburn.
The Magnificent 60s 